As the world watches Egypt crumble into chaos, with over 100 dead and 2000 injured, the Obama administration continues to be somewhat and rather curiously ambivalent. On the one hand, on Friday, Vice President Biden came to the defense of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, saying that he shouldn’t step aside. Yet, on the same day, the Telegraph (ala Wikileaks) reported that the U.S. had planned “regime change” for the “past three years” while both President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton demand that internet be restored to the Egyptian protesters. This morning, Secretary of State Clinton again clarified the United States’ official position, ”We do not want to send any message about backing forward or backing back.”

For all the lack of clarity on where the Obama administration stands, one thing is becoming more and more clear: Signs are beginning to point more toward the likelihood that President Obama’s State Department, unions, as well as Left-leaning media corporations are more directly involved in helping to ignite the Mid-East turmoil than they are publicly admitting.

If it is indeed the case that the Obama administration, with help by private-sector companies and the union movement has led an “internet revolution” in the middle east and toppled two governments within a month, the longer-term ramifications for U.S. relations with other allies such as Saudi Arabia and certain other Arab monarchies, could prove to have much more far-reaching consequences.

This is the full statement about the crisis in Egypt given by Walid Shoebat, a former Palestinian terrorist and former member of the Muslim Broherhood. He will be on Hannity tonight on the Fox News Channel. - Reggie

By Walid Shoebat

1/31/2011

With socialist revolutions, the rule is: “take out a Czar and you will get a Stalin!”

Keep in mind the fire of revolution that engulfs Egypt was ignited by socialists and later embraced by Islamists. It is true that the Muslim Brotherhood was banned as an organization in 1954 but it’s been tolerated and has forged alliances with legal and political groups in the last two decades; the liberal socialists, the Wafd, and other socialist labor parties have been allies.

Of course, the U.S policy led by closet socialist president Obama has been to publicly support the Egyptian people. Obama wants “rights of assembly” and “elections” in Egypt. Americans need to realize that democratic elections in the Middle East have never resulted in western style freedom! The rule in any Muslim majority nation, is that democracy is used DURING the elections ONLY… Period!

What did democratic elections in Muslim majority nations do? Iran is now a theocracy, Lebanon is in a state of chaos, Palestine is still a state of psychosis, Sudan is on the verge of splitting, and Turkey’s democratic elections are slowly emerging as an axis that will eventually lead to an Islamist alliance against Israel and the West. Soon, we’ll also see North Africa – in the name of democracy – remove all their dictators so they can elect you know who!

The most plausible outcome for Egypt’s chaos is a future election as demanded by world opinion, the outcome of which can be seen from the experience we had in the Palestinian elections, on which president George W. Bush insisted. The results ushered in a divide between Islamists and so-called moderate Palestinian Authority. Palestinians were killing Palestinians in the streets as Hamas ran rampant, executing other Muslims who didn’t agree with their agenda. But unlike that miniature state of psychosis, the scale of mayhem in Egypt will be immense! Egypt’s “democratic elections” will simply change one form of dictatorship into another!

Whether it is the Iranian Shia or Sunni Revolutions, the way to victory will not be only by stepping over Israel but also over Arabia – the cradle of Wahabism that started the trouble in the first place. As a consequence, the world will kiss its addiction to Arab oil good-bye after Iran destroys Arabia with nuclear weapons. You can say that I am mad, but the documents released by Wikileaks revealed that King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz repeatedly urged the United States to attack Iran in order to halt its suspected nuclear weapons program. If in doubt, ask yourself, didn’t Saddam Hussein send scuds crashing over Saudi Arabia during the First Gulf War? If he’d had nuclear warheads wouldn’t he have used them there?

And while the progressives cry “where are the weapons of mass destruction,” is there any doubt that Iraq’s neighbors are building them? Once Obama succeeds in pulling our troops out of Iraq as a good gesture to satisfy the screaming and complaining progressives that the U.S is not an occupier, then Iraq will immediately be gobbled up by Iran. And like the miniature Hezbollah-Hamas alliance against Israel, you will have a future Turkish-North Africa-Iranian alliance which will try to put the Islamic Caliphate “Humpty-Dumpty” back together again so they can dash in and “liberate” Jerusalem!

In the meantime, the Islamists will lay low, calling for democracy and – just like Arafat did – pretend to denounce terrorism at the cost of upsetting Al-Qaeda, who then gobbles it up and into the belly of its Trojan Horse, which, upon fully entering the fortresses of the West, will release its Al-Qaeda “locusts” into Israel, where they will meet their final destruction!

A Federal Court in Pensacola, Florida has ruled the ObamaCare law unconstitutional and void. This lawsuit was brought by 26 states. The court ruled, in part:

Because the individual mandate is unconstitutional and not severable, the entire Act must be declared void. This has been a difficult decision to reach, and I am aware that it will have indeterminable implications. At a time when there is virtually unanimous agreement that health care reform is needed in this country, it is hard to invalidate and strike down a statute titled "The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act."

This is excellent! Levin needs to push this and get on the phone with the 26 Attorneys General about this fact. However, I am curious as to why all the other attorneys I've heard talk about this decision haven't made this point. They claim the implementation can proceed because the individual mandate doesn't take effect until 2014. Only Levin is claiming the judge has stopped this law in its tracks. I believe Levin is right because of the implication made by the judge that he assumes the feds to comply with his ruling. Why would the judge say that if the implementation could continue unabated? - ReggieMark Levin: Obama cannot continue to implement ObamaCare

At the Daily Beast, Bruce Riedel has posted an essay called “Don’t fear Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood,” the classic, conventional-wisdom response to the crisis in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood is just fine, he’d have you believe, no need to worry. After all, the Brothers have even renounced violence!

One might wonder how an organization can be thought to have renounced violence when it has inspired more jihadists than any other, and when its Palestinian branch, the Islamic Resistance Movement, is probably more familiar to you by the name Hamas — a terrorist organization committed by charter to the violent destruction of Israel. Indeed, in recent years, the Brotherhood (a.k.a., the Ikhwan) has enthusiastically praised jihad and even applauded — albeit in more muted tones — Osama bin Laden. None of that, though, is an obstacle for Mr. Riedel, a former CIA officer who is now a Brookings scholar and Obama administration national-security adviser. Following the template the progressive (and bipartisan) foreign-policy establishment has been sculpting for years, his “no worries” conclusion is woven from a laughably incomplete history of the Ikhwan.

By his account, Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna “preached a fundamentalist Islamism and advocated the creation of an Islamic Egypt, but he was also open to importing techniques of political organization and propaganda from Europe that rapidly made the Brotherhood a fixture in Egyptian politics.” What this omits, as I recount in The Grand Jihad, is that terrorism and paramilitary training were core parts of Banna’s program. It is by leveraging the resulting atmosphere of intimidation that the Brotherhood’s “politics” have achieved success. The Ikhwan’s activist organizations follow the same program in the United States, where they enjoy outsize political influence because of the terrorist onslaught.

Banna was a practical revolutionary. On the one hand, he instructed his votaries to prepare for violence. They had to understand that, in the end — when the time was right, when the Brotherhood was finally strong enough that violent attacks would more likely achieve Ikhwan objectives than provoke crippling blowback — violence would surely be necessary to complete the revolution (meaning, to institute sharia, Islam’s legal-political framework). Meanwhile, on the other hand, he taught that the Brothers should take whatever they could get from the regime, the political system, the legal system, and the culture. He shrewdly realized that, if the Brothers did not overplay their hand, if they duped the media, the intelligentsia, and the public into seeing them as fighters for social justice, these institutions would be apt to make substantial concessions. Appeasement, he knew, is often a society’s first response to a threat it does not wish to believe is existential.

Here’s Riedel again:

By World War 2, [the Brotherhood] became more violent in its opposition to the British and the British-dominated monarchy, sponsoring assassinations and mass violence. After the army seized power in 1952, [the Brotherhood] briefly flirted with supporting Gamal Abdel Nasser’s government but then moved into opposition. Nasser ruthlessly suppressed it.

This history is selective to the point of parody. The Brotherhood did not suddenly become violent (or “more violent”) during World War II. It was violent from its origins two decades earlier. This fact — along with Egyptian Islamic society’s deep antipathy toward the West and its attraction to the Nazis’ virulent anti-Semitism — is what gradually beat European powers, especially Britain, into withdrawal.

Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton warns Egypt’s ancient Coptic Christian minority could become increasingly endangered should the protests against Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak drive him from power.

The rioting against the Mubarak regime began on Jan. 25, in the wake of the Jan. 15 overthrow of Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, with the publicly stated goals of ousting Mubarak from power and protesting Egypt’s high unemployment and rampant corruption, among other issues.

The rioting claimed the ruling party headquarters Friday and pushed the Mubarak regime to shut down Internet and cell phone communications in an effort to clamp down on opponents, and the regime sent the army into the streets Saturday to confront demonstrators as Cairo fell into near anarchy.

Bolton points out Egypt’s outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, which promotes the Islamist ideology employed more violently by Hamas and other terror groups, stands to gain despite being a late comer to the revolt.

“One thing I want to say about all of these young people and all of these university students is what they’re learning in the universities is very similar to what the Muslim Brotherhood preaches,” Bolton said. “So we have to worry about the radicalism among the students is very, very high.”

Consequently, conservatives are mistaken thinking anti-Mubarak forces will replace the current regime with a Western-style democracy because Mubarak represents the lesser of two evils when compared with the opposition, according to Bolton.

“The overthrow of the Mubarak regime will not by any sense of the imagination lead to the advent of Jeffersonian democracy,” Bolton said. “The greater likelihood is a radical, tightly knit organization like the Muslim Brotherhood will take advantage of the chaos and seize power.

“It is really legitimate for the Copts to be worried that instability follow Mubarak’s fall and his replacement with the Muslim Brotherhood.”

The Copts, who constitute between 10 and 20 percent of Egypt’s population and whose church traces its founding back to St. Mark the Evangelist, have been increasingly targeted by Islamic extremists in recent years and have suffered intense persecution.

Network's licences cancelled and accreditation of staff in Cairo withdrawn by order of information minister.

Al Jazeera denounced the closure of its bureau, saying the move was designed to stifle free reporting

The Egyptian authorities are revoking the Al Jazeera Network's licence to broadcast from the country, and will be shutting down its bureau office in Cairo, state television has said.

"The information minister [Anas al-Fikki] ordered ... suspension of operations of Al Jazeera, cancelling of its licences and withdrawing accreditation to all its staff as of today," a statement on the official Mena news agency said on Sunday.

In a statement, Al Jazeera said it strongly denounces and condemns the closure of its bureau in Cairo by the Egyptian government. The network received notification from the Egyptian authorities on Sunday morning.

"Al Jazeera has received widespread global acclaim for their coverage on the ground across the length and breadth of Egypt," the statement said.

An Al Jazeera spokesman said that the company would continue its strong coverage regardless.

Analysis: This year is turning into critical one for Israeli isolation in the Mideast. Turkey is gone and Egypt appears to be on way.

The collapse of Hosni Mubarak’s regime in Egypt is not yet about Israel but soon will be, depending on his successor.

If the Muslim Brotherhood grabs the reins in the massive Arab country, Israel will face an enemy with one of the largest and strongest militaries around, built on some of the most advanced American-made platforms.

The impact on Israel will be immediate – the IDF will need to undergo major structural changes, new units will need to be created and forces in the South will likely need to be beefed up. Since the Yom Kippur War in 1973, the IDF has not had to worry about two fronts at once. Until now.

The appointment of Intelligence Minister Omar Suleiman as the vice president in Egypt is a reassuring sign for Israel.

Suleiman has played a key role in Israeli- Egyptian relations over the years and is considered in charge of the “Israeli Dossier” His office has been responsible for coordinating efforts to stop smuggling via tunnels under the Philadelphi Corridor with Gaza and he is considered something of a moderate in comparison to outgoing Defense Minister Mohamed Tantawi.

Over the past fifty years, at least a half-million Americans, and perhaps many more, have died prematurely due to ill-designed and badly executed liberal programs. The causes, as I reveal in detail in Death by Liberalism, range from the criminal justice "reforms" of the 1960s, which triggered a crime wave that killed up to 268,000 Americans, to government-mandated fuel standards responsible for up to 125,000 lives. At least a thousand people are murdered each year by the derelict insane, with many deinstitutionalized lunatics dying as well, giving us a total of as many as 70,000 deaths. The number of deaths of children under the "protection" of state child care agencies is unknown (largely concealed by "privacy" laws) but must total in the thousands. (Twenty-one children died in this manner last year in Los Angeles County alone.)

All this strikes very close to home. There are few families that have not suffered a death from one of these causes over the last half-century. It's horrifying to consider that our lives are threatened by the actions of our own government, but we must consider it or risk becoming victims. How do we protect ourselves against democide?

When confronted with a risk, we analyze it and learn as much as we can in order to take the proper steps to avoid it. The process is no different here, even with the vast power of the government involved. While democide operates on a national scale, it should not be taken as overwhelming for that reason alone. Comprising small-scale elements, it is huge only in the aggregate. Responding to the threat is far from hopeless.

Crime - Crime remains the chief democidal killer. We're still living in the backwash of the great crime explosion of the late 20th century, triggered by interference with the criminal justice system by progressive judges and Supreme Court justices. Such cases as Mapp v. Ohio and Miranda v. Arizona were intended to "level the playing field" between law enforcement and criminals. This they did, with the innocent public paying the price.

Many municipalities, courts, and police forces have not learned the lesson, and they all continue applying failed policies. In such cases, citizens must take their own protection in hand.

Self-defense is the key. "Self-defense" means weapons -- weapons that are effective at a distance, that will fend off potential criminals, that will, if possible, end the confrontation with no escalation to higher levels of violence. Only one item meets this standard: the handgun.

It is possible to criticize ownership and use of handguns on a number of grounds. We will not debate this. Some of these contentions are exaggerated, butg some are well-taken -- the threat of suicide and particularly the possibility of children toying with a loaded gun are two examples.

But as the saying goes, you may need a gun only once in your life, but when you need it, nothing else will do. Drawbacks of gun ownership are similar in nature to the drawbacks of many other common items, such as cars and electrical appliances. All are dangerous, even deadly in certain circumstances. But dangers can be minimized. Despite accidents and misadventures, it remains true that guns are unexcelled at what they do, which is to end criminal activity. According to John Lott, the leading expert on gun use, guns are utilized in confrontations with criminals up to 3 million times a year. In most cases, the simple appearance of a gun causes a felon to flee. No shot is fired, and no one is hurt.

The first order of business is to study the firearms laws of your jurisdiction. Several states and many cities have adapted the anti-gun position as policy and expressed it in law, which is often enforced with far greater ferocity that any laws aimed at actual criminals. It is no coincidence that these jurisdictions (New York City, Chicago, and the District of Columbia among them) include some of the most liberal areas in the country. Under such circumstances, the dangers presented by legal sanctions must be carefully balanced against those presented by criminals.

On purchasing a gun, care must be given to the choice of model, caliber, size, and other important factors. For instance, there are some calibers too powerful for a woman to handle. Also, a gun featuring a hammer may become entangled with clothing, purse straps, and so on. Other factors include the difference between double and single action, concealability, and size.

Obtain a carrying permit and whatever other paperwork is necessary. Take gun safety, marksmanship, and self-defense courses. Purchase of a gun safe or locking system is advisable.

Familiarize yourself with the danger levels of various neighborhoods as revealed by recent crime rates. (Somebody wishing to perform a valuable public service might consider establishing websites for each municipality charting crime rates in various neighborhoods and providing warnings of criminal activity). Take care as to where you are traveling and the routes you choose, along with your destination. Patronizing bars in grubby neighborhoods is never a good idea.

Such steps taken by enough Americans would deter crime by raising the cost of doing business among felons. It would also take the pressure off police forces (although most police oppose an armed populace, operating under the assumption that cops and "civilians," as they refer to us, exist in a state of open war), and ease budget problems in many municipalities. The fact that any such activity by law-abiding citizens is widely discouraged is simply one more example of human perversity.

Such incidents as the recent Tucson shootings, though grounds for serious reflection on a number of counts, do not alter the primary case. Once again, according to John Lott, a large number of such incidents have been curtailed by individuals wielding legal weapons.

Suddenly, Washington is consumed with a question too long ignored: Can we safely do business with the Muslim Brotherhood?

The reason this question has taken on such urgency is, of course, because the Muslim Brotherhood (or MB, also known by its Arabic name, the Ikhwan) is poised to emerge as the big winner from the chaos now sweeping North Africa and increasingly likely to bring down the government of the aging Egyptian dictator, Hosni Mubarak.

In the wake of growing turmoil in Egypt, a retinue of pundits, professors and former government officials has publicly insisted that we have nothing to fear from the Ikhwan since it has eschewed violence and embraced democracy.

For example, Bruce Reidel, a controversial former CIA analyst and advisor to President Obama, posted an article entitled “Don’t Fear Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood” at the Daily Beast. In it, he declared: “The Egyptian Brotherhood renounced violence years ago, but its relative moderation has made it the target of extreme vilification by more radical Islamists. Al Qaeda’s leaders, Osama bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri, started their political lives affiliated with the Brotherhood but both have denounced it for decades as too soft and a cat’s paw of Mubarak and America.”

Then, there was President George W. Bush’s former press spokeswoman, Dana Perino, who went so far on January 28th as to tell Fox News “…And don’t be afraid of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. This has nothing to do with religion.”

One reason we might be misperceiving the MB as no threat is because a prime source of information about such matters is the Muslim Brotherhood itself. As the Center for Security Policy’s new, best-selling Team B II report entitled, Shariah: The Threat to America found: “It is now public knowledge that nearly every major Muslim organization in the United States is actually controlled by the MB or a derivative organization. Consequently, most of the Muslim-American groups of any prominence in America are now known to be, as a matter of fact, hostile to the United States and its Constitution.”

The November election sent a clear message to Washington: less government, less debt, less spending. President Obama certainly heard it, but judging from his State of the Union address, he doesn't believe a word of it. The people say they want cuts? Sure they do - in the abstract. But any party that actually dares carry them out will be punished severely. On that, Obama stakes his reelection.

No other conclusion can be drawn from a speech that didn't even address the debt issue until 35 minutes in. And then what did he offer? A freeze on domestic discretionary spending that he himself admitted would affect a mere one-eighth of the budget.

Obama seemed impressed, however, that it would produce $400 billion in savings over 10 years. That's an average of $40 billion a year. The deficit for last yearalone was more than 30 times as much. And total federal spending was more than 85 times that amount. A $40 billion annual savings for a government that just racked up $3 trillion in new debt over the past two years is deeply unserious. It's spillage, a rounding error.

In stark, bitter contrast to his indifference to the popular Iranian uprising in the summer of 2009, Barack Obama has almost immediately engaged in events on the ground in Egypt, and it’s not good. Obama took no such action with Iran — a jihadist terrorist state agitating in countries all over the world. That was an historic missed opportunity.

And since then also, Obama’s most consistent response to Iran (as well as to North Korea’s hostile moves) has been to ignore them and hope that proven evildoers will behave themselves. Wrong. The good cop is off the beat.

Obama failed, and the consequences of his failure have begun to be made manifest now in Egypt. I cannot understate the importance of Egypt to American interests and Israeli security. Egypt is arguably the second-most important country to the US in the region. Mubarak has been a U.S. ally for decades. We send three billion dollars a year to Egypt. And Egypt made a peace deal with Israel.

The president's plans for "clean energy standards" amount to carbon controls by other means.

Cap and trade is dead. Long live cap and trade.

The president presented his new, conciliatory face to the nation this week, and his State of the Union was as notable for what it didn't include as what it did. He uttered not one word about global warming, a comprehensive climate bill, or his regulatory attempts to reduce carbon. Combined with his decision to give the axe to controversial climate czar Carol Browner, political analysts took all this as further proof that Barack Obama was moving to the middle, making nice with Republicans.

Snort. Guffaw. Chortle.

Listen carefully to Mr. Obama's speech and you realize he spent plenty of it on carbon controls. He just used a different vocabulary. If the president can't get carbon restrictions via cap and trade, he'll get them instead with his new proposal for a "clean energy" standard. Clean energy, after all, sounds better to the public ear, and he might just be able to lure, or snooker, some Republicans into going along.

The official end of cap and trade, and Mrs. Browner, wasn't conciliation—it was necessity. The public now understands that cap and trade is an economy killer, and no small number of Democrats lost their seats in midterms for supporting it. Few in the party want to take it up again, and House Republicans won't let it pass. Mr. Obama would be crazy to continue calling for it.

Friday, January 28, 2011

Today's episode of The Daily News was pre-empted by breaking news in Egypt.

I have been watching this story closely for several days trying to figure out who these revolutionaries are in Egypt. Are they communists, radical Islamists, freedom loving citizens seeking democratic government?

This uprising is extremely serious and I pray radical Islamists are not going to take over the government in Cairo or any other middle eastern Muslim nation where riots are taking place.

I see the Egyptian government has shut down the Internet, Facebook and Twitter. This is the power Joe Lieberman is trying to get for President Obama. The famous Internet "kill switch" that congress is pushing. We must not allow any president to have that power over us.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

WASHINGTON – The House Budget Committee held a hearing today on the fiscal impact of the Democrats’ new health care law. Key witnesses, including the Obama Administration’s own non-partisan actuary for Medicare, testified that the law’s much-touted savings were unlikely to materialize; that it would drive health care costs higher, not bend them down; and that the new spending entailed by the law would probably be much higher than originally projected.

Chief Medicare Actuary on President's health care claims: "I would say false, more so than true"

In a wide-ranging interview for a profile to be published by The Daily Caller next week, Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren told TheDC that despite reports that Iran’s nuclear program has experienced serious setbacks, the Islamic Republic remains a pressing threat.

When asked whether the comment reportedly made this month by lionized outgoing Mossad chief Meir Dagan that the “soonest Iran will have a nuclear device is 2015, if that,” means Iran is no longer the immediate threat it was once thought to be, Oren said Dagan’s view is just one assessment of the situation.

“I have great regard for Meir Dagan,” Oren told TheDC in an interview conducted at the Israeli Embassy in Northwest Washington. “His assessment is one assessment of one person. It’s not an assessment that reflects all of Israel’s intelligence community or Israel’s military community or Israel’s political echelon.”

“There are other opinions out there,” Oren continued, “and the other opinions are that we do not have a lot of time here.”

Asked whether the ongoing pro-democracy, anti-government demonstrations in capitals across the Arab world were welcomed by Israel, Oren responded cautiously, saying while Israel “welcomes democratization,” it is concerned about the stability of neighboring states crucial to its security.

“Well, I think Israel welcomes democratization of the Middle East. I think we see democratization as a factor for stability,” he said. “Looking forward to any future Palestinian state, we want that Palestinian state to be democratic. At the same time we have concerns about the stability of some neighboring states whose stability is very important for us and important for the peace process.”

Oren explained that the Israeli government is particularly worried that the popular uprisings will be hijacked by Islamists.

“We are concerned lest the uprising in Tunisia goes the way of the uprising in Iran in 1979 — what began as a sort of secular, very diffuse, popular movement was rather quickly hijacked by Islamic extremists because they are the most organized and best-funded of these groups. And there very focused. They know exactly what they want. And it’s always a danger in the Middle East that these movements can be hijacked,” he said.

The link to this video was sent to me by a retired postal worker that I know. This is beyond outrageous in so many ways. I wonder how many other postal workers are doing the exact same thing all over the country. Hopefully, no one will have to die at the hands of a drunk driving mailman in order to find out. - Reggie

(New York, NY – January 26, 2011) Mercury Radio Arts today announced the launch of the newly redesigned and expanded glennbeck.com, which includes the hiring of conservative political commentator and writer S.E. Cupp as a full time employee to the site. The improved glennbeck.com offers free 24/7 stream of Glenn’s radio show, behind the scenes access to all things Glenn– including news and updates on Glenn’s radio show, TV show, live events, and books. The new glennbeck.com is also HTML 5 compatible, allowing fans to watch glennbeck.com video on iOS devices.

S.E. Cupp is a political columnist and culture critic and has written for the New York Daily News, Townhall, Newsmax, the Washington Post, Slate, Human Events, American Spectator, FOXNews.com, Sports Illustrated online, Maxim online, NASCAR.com, FrontPage, Detroit Free Press and others. As a political commentator, Cupp has appeared on FOX News, MSNBC, CNN and CSPAN. She is also a regular guest on “Real Time with Bill Maher,” “The Joy Behar Show,” “Hannity,” “Fox & Friends,” and “Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld.”

My column today contrasts President Obama’s State of the Union hype about “innovation” and “investment” in education with the abysmal failures of massive federal spending on America’s schools. The White House love to talk about global “competitiveness,” but refuse to support competition in our government-run K-12 schools monopoly. “Sputnik moment” — or Sputter-nik moment?

Related: The Cartel, an excellent documentary on the bloated, bottom-performing New Jersey public schools, features a telling quote from Trenton councilman Jim Coston that sums up decades of government education sinkhole spending: “There’s almost a sense that the worse we do the more money we get.”

Related: NEA Gave More Than $13 Million to Advocacy Groups, including: Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate – $200,000; Health Care for America Now! – $450,000; MediaMatters – $100,000; Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund – $25,000; People for the American Way – $64,538; and Al Sharpton’s National Action Network – $10,000.

President Obama's foot remains where it has been since the day he entered the Oval Office, on the gas pedal. He's not braking for anyone or anything. All this pre-SOTU spin from Obama's whisperers, gobbled up by the Obama-hungry media, was always nonsense. Obama has no intention of touching entitlements in any significant way, period. Why would he tamper with the New Deal and Great Society when he considers them a good start but insufficiently bold to advance his statist beliefs? Obama has no intention of honestly working with Republicans on health care, cap-and-trade, etc. These are hallmarks of his transformative agenda. They define him and his presidency. His bureaucracy is working overtime to institute them.

It amazes me that some usually thoughtful people seize on anything they can find to argue, or hope, that Obama has been chastened by the last election. For weeks they've pointed to the tax deal as evidence of his "pivoting." Actually, what Obama did is tee-up the tax fight for a time when he believes his class warfare demagoguery can be best employed -- during the final weeks of his re-election bid. He already started it last night. And, of course, the Republicans fell for it, hailing the tax deal as momentous. Obama is ready to deal some more, they reckoned -- a sad delusion.

As a matter of basic logic, how could the biggest deficit-spender in American history reverse course and become a responsible fiscal hawk? It was never going to happen. How could a man who believes his lot in life is a matter of destiny, his and the nation's, allow his legacy to be tainted by a Tea Party-driven election? In his mind, he won't. "We are the ones we have been waiting for," as he famously said about himself and his supporters. He's not going to allow a single mid-term election, driven by what he perceives to be yahoos and miscreants, change the course of history -- his history or the nation's. Too many commentators just don't comprehend this man.

The contradictions and ironies in his speech are too numerous to catalogue. Suffice it to point out a few of the most glaring examples. This is our Sputnik moment, he says, at the same time he is cutting NASA's budget (one of the few programs he wants to cut), directed its top administrator to focus on Muslim outreach, and entered into a treaty with the Russians that weakens our strategic defense efforts. Obama says he is willing to work with Republicans on reforming Obamacare, yet the GOP has offered several reforms that Obama has completely ignored for they focus on private alternatives and competition -- neither of which are compatible with Obama's top-down, government-driven ideology. He says Medicare and Medicaid are unsustainable, yet he not only offers no suggestions on how to reform them, he rejects his own Deficit Commission's recommendations, uses Obamacare to expand Medicaid, and drains resources from Medicare. Obama's idea of unleashing research, development, and science to create the new technologies and jobs of the future is centered on targeted federal grants and initiatives -- bigger government, more spending, and more regulating. It is, of course, the American private sector that is the engine of spectacular economic progress. And a Democrat SOTU speech would not be complete without an attack on the oil industry. But for the Obama administration's anti-energy production policies, the oil industry would, in fact, be exploring and drilling more within and around our shores, thereby increasing supply and driving down price. Still, Obama says the government shouldn't be subsidizing these companies with tax breaks. No, direct taxpayer subsidies are to be reserved for GE, GM, Chrysler, Wall Street, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and other favored businesses or quasi-businesses.

Obama said that it is time to put party labels aside and work for the nation. Within 12 hours of that statement, he hit the road to begin his re-election and raise an astounding $1 billion in campaign cash. I guess he meant for everyone else to put partisan politics aside. After all, history calls him.

We conservatives must stay focused. We must defeat Obama in 2012 by nominating an intelligent, articulate, confident conservative for president. We must keep a close eye on the Republican leadership in Congress to make sure it does not return to its loser ways. Keep in mind; they are not of the Tea Party movement, although they've benefited politically from it. We must continue to take on the Left (including the mainstream media) both intellectually and politically. And we must send more conservatives to Congress. Our focus must be victory and we must not be distracted by the symbolism, games, ways, and intimidation tactics of those who've brought this great nation to this perilous point.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday night, just hours before the president's State of the Union address, began the legislative process of forcing the House-passed health care repeal bill to the Senate floor for a vote.

Using a particular Senate rule typically reserved for the leaders, McConnell bypassed committee action and put the bill directly before the members, even without the support of the Majority Leader who, for the most part, controls the legislative calendar. It is a procedure that takes a couple of days to ripen before any vote can occur, though even then it could be a fight.

McConnell's Democratic counterpart, Harry Reid of Nevada, has vowed that no such repeal vote will occur, but the Kentucky Republican has stuck to his guns, telling Fox News' Chris Wallace on Sunday, "The Democratic leadership in the Senate doesn't want a vote on this bill, but I assure you we will."

McConnell has a crack floor staff who cannot be underestimated in finding creative ways to get this vote.

Be sure to catch Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) as he delivers the Republican Address to the Nation tonight immediately following President Obama’s State of the Union message. You can watch Chairman Ryan LIVE online and discuss his remarks with others at Facebook.com/OfficeofSpeakerBoehner/: